At a Game Developers Conference press event, Electronic Arts showed a short …

Electronic Arts revealed their plans for the next three Battlefield 3 expansions, and formally unveiled the new Medal of Honor: Warfighter, planned for an October 23 release, at a Game Developers Conference press presentation in San Francisco on Tuesday night.

DICE General Manager Karl Magnus Troeddson and Battlefield 3 Producer Patrick Bach took the stage to revel in the 12 million strong "BF3 army," announcing a coming "rent-a-server" program that will allow console Battlefield 3 players to customize their server environments.

The pair also shared basic details on three upcoming, themed BF3 expansions: one which will introduce infantry-centric gameplay with a focus on vertical levels and include 10 new weapons; one which will ostensibly focus on expanding vehicle combat; and a third, simply titled End Game with no further reported details.

Medal of Honor: Warfighter

The Battlefield 3 news was just a lead-in to a more substantive presentation about Medal of Honor: Warfighter. Danger Close Executive Producer Greg Goodrich touted a live-action trailer for the game as a "reenactment" of a hostage rescue in the Philippines, showing a hostage dragged out into a room while the other captives watch in horror.

Shown in silhouette on the wall, the terrorists force the hostage to kneel, and one of the terrorists brandishes a machete, presumably to behead the hostage. The lights dim, shots ring out, and when the lights come back on only the silhouette of the hostage remains on the wall. Cut to a high angle shot of the hostage, looking up as if tracing the path of the departing angels of mercy who must have been responsible for shooting the terrorists who lay dead on the floor around him.

"Every single mission in this game has a dotted line to a real world event," Goodrich told the crowd, adding that if we recognized some of the missions in Warfighter, it may be due to reading similar stories in the news. The trailer was apparently based on a real-life rescue of aid workers taken hostage in Isabela City, Basilan in the Phillipines.

Authenticity

Warfighter will not limit its stories to those of elite American Tier 1 operators, but will also feature international special operations teams like the British Special Air Service (SAS) and German Kommando Spezialkräfte (KSK), and Polish GROM commandos among others. Warfighter will feature "Blue on Blue" playlists, where these different spec ops forces will be pitted against each other.

These announcements were followed by a staged "interview" between Goodrich and two American special forces operatives identified as Kevin and Tyler. Kevin, who said he was a former member of Naval Special Warfare, talked about a "vent book" in which he and a teammate wrote down their frustrations while waiting to be deployed. That evolved into a manifesto on how the two men would fight the war on terror if they were allowed to fight it their own way, which found its way into Greg Goodrich's hands in 2006, and was reportedly the basis in part for the Medal of Honor reboot in 2010.

Tyler self-identified as part of a special operations group that dealt with Tier 1 and Tier 2 operatives. When Tyler played the Medal of Honor reboot, he said he realized the creators "knew some people" because the game was "right on" and portrayed the soldiers correctly. Tyler is now working on Warfighter full-time as an associate producer, making sure that the weapons and kit are authentic and directing motion capture sessions.

Demo level

After impressing on the crowd even further how authentic Warfighter is going to be, the developers showed a brief demo level that was extremely reminiscent of Modern Warfare 4, aside from the clearly different game engine being used. Everything from the close-quarters combat and liberal application of hand grenades to slow-motion door breaching made the comparison impossible to ignore.

During the demo, a door breach was preceded by a four-option menu which included icons that suggested the option to apply breaching explosives, flashbang grenades, or just kicking the door in. Those breaching options were memorable as the only mechanic in the demo level which did not seem instantly familiar from the Modern Warfare games. The infantry section was followed by an on-rails river extraction on inflatable boats, a traditional high-action escape scene punctuated by use of a mounted grenade launcher, and ending with a helicopter extraction at sea.